Sister Diaspora for Liberation urges the United States Congress to support the Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2015 (S2275) and Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2016 (HR5454), which are bipartisan bills that provide citizenship to individuals who were legally adopted to the United States as children but never obtained U.S. citizenship.

Since the 1940’s, an estimated 350,000 children have been internationally adopted by U.S. citizen parents. While children born to U.S. citizen parents are automatically citizens, their adopted children were not afforded this same right. As a result, thousands of adoptees do not have U.S. citizenship, barring them from government services, financial aid, home loans, and voting privileges, while also placing them at risk for deportation. The ACA will remedy this discriminatory situation as all children of American parents should be treated equally.

In October 2000, the U.S. Congress passed the Child Citizenship Act (CCA), through which foreign-born children adopted by U.S. citizen parents automatically acquire U.S. citizenship. Prior to the passage of the CCA, intercountry adoptees and their parents were required to go through a lengthy and costly naturalization process. Although the intent of the CCA was to ensure that all intercountry adopted children of U.S. citizen parents receive automatic U.S. citizenship, it failed to accomplish this goal as it left out the thousands of adoptees born before 1983.

The Adoptee Citizenship Act simply supports the original intent of the CCA by ensuring that all intercountry adoptees that were adopted by U.S. citizen parents have U.S. citizenship. We ask Congress to close the loophole left by the CCA immediately by passing the Adoptee Citizenship Act.

Sister Diaspora for Liberation, a diasporic intersectional feminist collective rooted in a love ethic and healing, stands in solidarity with the Great Sioux Nation, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and its people and allied tribes in their opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline across their lands. We are a collective of womyn activists of the global diaspora that have shared experiences and struggles. While we understand that this looks different for every womyn, we know that our oppression is rooted in the imperial capitalist-white supremacist-patriarchal-heteronormative systems we live under. These systems, manifested through colonialism and the historic genocide of the native peoples of the Americas continue to assert the oppression and unjust treatment of indigenous tribes, their traditional practices, and their lands.

The United States continues to break treaties and fails to respect the authority and rights of the Tribe, its lands, and its people. The 1,172-mile pipeline will wreak environmental havoc across its path and poison the water supply for not only the tribe, but for thousands of other people who live along its path as it seeks to cut through the Missouri river and transport over 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Scientists say that it is over 50% likely that an accident will happen and cause a spill and environmental devastation. We know that the continued use of fossil fuels is destroying our planet and threatening the future generations’ livelihoods. The pipeline also seeks to cut through sacred and ancestral tribal lands, of which the Sioux should have full sovereignty and rights. The US government has violated both Laramie Treaties with the tribe and several international laws in its conduct with the pipeline. The pipeline itself violates environmental and preservation policies.

On top of all the listed grievances, we are appalled at the militaristic and violent attempts to suppress and dismantle peaceful protests, to which the tribes have a right to enact in defense of their lands. We have no doubt that the path of the pipeline was chosen to run through tribal lands as an act of racial injustice and lack of recognition of native peoples and their rights.

As a result of all this, Sister Diaspora for Liberation calls for the end of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the restoration of and recognition of the sovereign rights of the Standing Rock Tribe and protection of our environment by halting extraction of the Bakken oil.

On Monday, September 5, 2016, there was a hearing by the El Salvadorian Courts for Elizabeth Santos, one of the women who belongs to the group of Las 17, the 17 women who have been deprived of their liberty by the Salvadoran justice system for obstetric complications. Elizabeth Santos, at the time was a 22-year old resident of Lourdes Colón where she worked in a bakery. On April 2015, she suffered an obstetric complication at home, losing a lot of blood and was taken by her mother to the May 1st Salvadorian Social Security Institute hospital. There she was accused of abortion by healthcare professionals, who did not establish what kind of pregnancy complications she had. It was later discovered through an autopsy by the Institute of Legal Medicine, that the cause of death was a brain hemorrhage, and even with the overwhelming evidence, this same institution concluded that there were 4 different causes of death. Based on this report, it was determined that as required by Article 189 of the criminal procedure code there was no clear cause of the death and therefore Lourdes was indicted on four counts.

At the public hearing held in the Isidro Menendez court, the Citizens Association defense team requested that the charge of aggravated murder be changed and implored the prosecution, to change the charge to incomplete abortion, due to the fact that the mother went to hospital. The fetus was attached to the placenta and that caused no oxygen to reach the lungs to pass necessary fluids. In the course of the hearing, there were evident gaps in the arguments and a lack of evidence presented by the Attorney General of the Republic.

The judge acquitted Elizabeth Santos and granted her freedom due to insufficient evidence and the arguments of the defense. We celebrate the acquittal in this case, but unfortunately Elizabeth Santos was deprived of freedom for more than a year, for a crime she never committed.

The case of Elizabeth Santos strengthens our commitment to continue demonstrating and advocating so that no woman is judged by obstetric complications and all are guaranteed due process.

Sister Diaspora for Liberation (SDL) is proud to endorse Marisol Alcantara for SD31. Marisol is a longtime community and labor leader that has been fighting for working class families for over two decades. Marisol continues to demonstrate an unwavering commitment to working class families. She currently serves as an organizer for the New York State Nurses Association. Albany is in dire need of an independent voice that will make sure that the communities whom are historically dispossessed and over looked will have a voice at the table. Currently, there is not a single Afro Latina that serves in the Senate. This is unacceptable. As an organization comprised of diasporic women of color, we know that Marisol will champion issues that disproportionally affect our communities such as access to affordable housing and quality healthcare; we look forward to supporting her candidacy on Tuesday, September 13, 2016.http://www.marisolalcantarany.com/